Owned By Fate(30)

“Tell me your safe word.”

“Um?”

“Dumpling, Caroline. Dumpling.” He edged the paddle between her legs, slipped it through her wetness. “Say it for me.”

“Dumpling,” she gasped. “God, that sounds ridiculous.”

He laughed softly. “You get points for creativity.”

“Well.” Caroline’s eyes squeezed shut against the riotous sensations. “That’s something.”

“I’m going to blindfold you, but not just yet.” The paddle disappeared, sweeping her with unexpected disappointment. “I want you looking into my eyes the first time I spank your pretty ass.” Teeth clenched, he ground his forehead against hers. “Don’t you dare hide anything from me, baby.”

Caroline opened her mouth to reply, but the air froze in her lungs when the paddle connected with the underside curve of her bottom. Slap. Leather, supple and giving, sent a shock of winged heat careening through her, spinning and clenching, only interrupted when the paddle came down again, slightly harder. Slap! Oh God, she hadn’t expected it to feel good, but it did. Holy hell, it did. All the pressure she’d been facing, the fear of letting everyone down, seemed to lessen with each stroke of the paddle. Absorbing her stress into the leather. Slap.

This time, Caroline moaned, struggling to keep her eyes open and focused on Jonah but failing. Just before her eyelids fell, she glimpsed blistering arousal and relief in his eyes, but she could only process one desire. More.

…

This woman is mine.

Jonah watched Caroline surrender before him, soaking in her gratified surprise greedily, needing every drop. At the first stroke of his paddle, he’d watched her mouth tremble, her pupils dilate. It had been insanely beautiful, her reaction nothing short of a masterpiece. This had to be it. The reason she had magnetized him from the beginning. Underneath her proper outward appearance, Caroline Preston had been waiting to be possessed by him.

He used the paddle’s surface to soothe her stinging flesh before raising the instrument higher and connecting once again, hard enough to jolt the front of her body into his. Breasts flattened against his abdomen, thighs rubbed and interlocked. His groan of pleasure was nearly drowned out by the sexiest whimpering noise his ears had ever encountered. It thickened his erection painfully behind his fly, but he refused to touch himself or allow any kind of relief. No, he planned to savor every second of his sexual high. One Caroline had effortlessly woven around him.

“Jonah…”

He brought the paddle down harder. “In my bedroom, you will call me Master.”

Caroline’s body shuddered violently. Her arms wound around his neck, and she buried her face in his throat. At first, the move, which begged for comfort, filled him with dread. Jesus, no. I’ve hurt her. But then he felt her mouth moving hot and wet across his skin, her lithe body dragging up and down against him, enticing, seducing as if it were necessary.

“Master, please…” she whispered in his ear. “I’m dying here.”

Jonah wound her hair in his first and tugged her back. Mouth swollen and slick, eyes glowing with kindled heat, she was a goddess. His goddess. “I’m going to love teaching you some patience, sweetheart. You don’t know what dying means yet. You’ll know when you’ve come for my mouth so many times, you’d sell your soul to be filled.”

With one hand, Jonah reached down and tore the insubstantial red panties from her body, rendering her completely, blessedly naked. Almost immediately, he had to battle the urge to drop to his knees, wrench her legs apart, and bury his tongue in her heat. Such little restraint was wholly unlike him, but just then he embraced it. Let it scorch through his chest and make him desperate. He was done trying to keep his beast caged in her presence.

Jonah tossed the paddle behind him onto the bed, then gripped her around the waist and boosted her up onto his dresser. “Spread those legs, sweetheart. Show me where the paddle made you wet.”

Her knuckles went white where she grasped the furniture’s edge for balance, making no move to obey him. She wet her lips nervously. Both telling signs that he needed to reassure her, pull back just a little, or he’d lose her.

Jonah leaned forward, pushed her hair back from her face, and kissed her, slowly and deeply. He could barely concentrate enough to draw the blindfold from his drawer. “Caroline, I find everything about you excruciatingly beautiful,” he murmured against her temple as he tied it on over her closed eyes. “Yes, I’m going to demand things from you. I very likely won’t be able to stop myself from taking you harder than I should. But underneath all of that, I’ll be in awe of you. Can you try and remember that?”